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>>> November 30, 2000
Micro-film Everyone's a director: Eveo is a site aimed at independent filmmakers with a taste for the filthy lucre. Every so often, eveo runs a contest that gives away staggering sums of money to indie filmmakers. Categories range from travel and true-life documentaries to comedies and sports. A computer-animation duo out of San Franciso recently walked away with $25,000 (U.S.) for their short Bowling Fer Souls, which pits an Ed "Big Daddy" Roth style devil against a team of bowling pins in purgatory. Anyone can submit their short films and compete for cash. Check out the films at www.eveo.com. Pir8: www.doom9.net is the Web's greatest repository of DVD piracy info. Did you know that you can easily copy movies to your hard drive in a fraction of the space they'd take up on a DVD? With this knowledge, you could soon be trading movies on the Internet like it was nobody's business. But of course, that would be illegal. Michael Citrome |
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>>> November 23, 2000
Robo-crop Funky robot: It can dance, shimmy and shake. It can even walk around. It's the Asimo robot, developed by Honda Japan, and it's the most advanced humanoid robot to date. With its white spacesuit and backpack, it's more Tintin than C3PO, but this is a serious advance in robotics. Photos and video are available at www.honda.co.jp/ASIMO/. The site is mostly in Japanese but click on 4 for Quicktime video. Fast times: When it comes to Internet access, we Canadians have lucked out. We have cheap high-speed Net connections available almost everywhere, and word around the campfire has the CRTC declaring it an essential service. A recent story on thestar.com says that the telecommunications regulatory body is under pressure to create standards for fast and cheap Internet service, and the CRTC's vice-chair tentatively agrees. Michael Citrome |
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>>> November 16, 2000
A really big shoe Fly kicks: Run DMC rapped about their Adidas, KRS-One dissed MC Shan's wack Puma sneakers, but Raekwon put it best with "They're what you keep spending your money on." Sneaker obsession has overtaken the Net. Vintage Air Jordans from your uncle's closet can bring over $200 on eBay. Check out Sneaker Nation (www.sneaker-nation.com) and vote for your fave sneaks, look at the profiles of other sneaker fanatics, and read about the astounding popularity of the Nike Cortez among East L.A. gang members. That's right, actual testimony from the homeboys about their kicks. And don't miss the Air Jordan retrospective. Tanks for everything: There are some mysteries in the universe that need solving. There are others that aren't really bothering anyone. Take, for example, the question of what happens when you run over a hard drive with a tank. Some crazies in Switzerland found out. The verdict? The hard drive fared much better than could be expected. Judge for yourself at www.homepage.cc/harddisk. Michael Citrome |
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>>> November 9, 2000
Far from kosher Child's play: Remember growing up with those "the more you know" commercials? They had popular NBC celebrities telling kids not to smoke crack or run out into traffic? TechnicalVirgin.com has a similar message for horny teens who want to get it on without getting in the family way. It's a simple idea really: abstinence doesn't work and birth control can be ineffective, so the clear solution is anal sex. There are testimonials from "real teens" and a video public service announcement you can forward to easily scandalized school board officials. Money = toilet: Jealous of all those nouveau-riche dot-com kids riding around in solid-gold SUVs? Well their time is at hand, and it's going to be one hell of a yard sale. For a while now, fuckedcompany.com has been documenting the undoing of the information revolution. Sure, financial sites may trumpet the latest startups set to IPO, but fuckedcompany will tell you who just fired all their workers, while laughing bitterly. Michael Citrome |
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>>> November 2, 2000
Far from kosher Mmm.. bacon: The Internet certainly doesn't lack in immature, rude, scatological humour sites. There are plenty of places to go to see ministers farting and furniture sex. But no other site pulls it off quite like ilovebacon.com. Every day brings a panopoly of cruel hilarity, in forward-friendly text, image, audio and video. Witness recent postings, which include a series of incomprehensible Japanese commercials featuring young schoolgirls and giant anthropomorphic raccoons with enormous swinging genitals. And no visit to ilovebacon.com would be complete without seeing photos of the Kuntz drive-in and the In-N-Out Lube. Artari: Let's get things straight. There's no video-game version of Princess Diana's death. Likewise, the latest Nintendo 64 release doesn't have any self-immolating Vietnamese monks. But you might be fooled into believing it does when you see this site. Screenshots is an online exhibition of famous events, some real, some fictional, rendered in video game style. Created by digital artist Jon Haddock, Screenshots is unique and powerful. View it at www.whitelead.com/jrh/screenshots. Michael Citrome |
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>>> October 26, 2000
Dial-up So cool: Wristwatch video cameras and artificially intelligent robot cats aren't something out of the Jetsons, they're some of the super-cool tech toys available right now. True gadget junkies' mouths water at the mere mention of a new advance in digital cameras. Keeping up with latest toys just got easier with I4U Future Technology News. Presented in a form similar to seminal news-for-nerds site Slashdot.org, I4U features daily updates on the latest gadgets from around the world. Impress all those know-it-alls who get their info from TV. Check it out at www.i4u.com. Wodka: iVodka.com is everything you wanted to know about vodka but were too snockered to ask. Aiming to be the most comprehensive source of vodka information on the Net, iVodka.com is the site for the erudite alkie. Off-line: This one's been circulating in e-mail and on ICQ for the last while, but here it is for the benefit of those not in the loop. Just follow these instructions: Dial 1-800-888-3999, listen to all of the options, hit 7. Michael Citrome |
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>>> October 19, 2000
Destroy all humans! Exterminate: Dr. Who is the show that scared the hell out of us as kids. Far from the colour-coordinated space battles of Star Trek, the BBC's take on sci-fi merged gothic horror with silly accents and Tiki-bar-meets-Dungeon-and-Dragons monsters. Plus, the flying phone booth was a little, well, conceptual for kids raised on X-Wings and the USS Enterprise. Of the many sites devoted to the travails of the good Doctor, one of the best is maintained by the BBC itself. The official Dr. Who Web site (www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/) features Dr. Who radio, an alien fact file and even an online gameshow featuring the vicious Cybermen. All you need now is a hundred tacos. Sumo power: Here in North America we have Robowars, where remote-control buzzing demons try to blow each other up with tethered spiky things. The Japanese have taken a more subtle approach to robot battles, blending the ancient sport of Sumo with modern robotic technology. Push the Robot-Sumo competition page at www.fsi.co.jp/sumo-e/. Michael Citrome |
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>>> October 12, 2000
Nude nerds! Cool toons: If you like your cartoons with a healthy dose of innuendo, violence, ethnic stereotyping, drunkenness and Irish-bashing, then Icebox.com should be your number-one recreation destination. There are over a dozen original cartoon series presented as three- to four-minute shorts. The cartoons are strictly classic Hanna Barbera style, but there are pretty big names attached to them, including Ren and Stimpy's John Kricfalusi and comic book bigshot Peter Bagge. With shows like Hard Drinkin' Lincoln, Jesus and his Brothers and the soon-to-premiere Queer Duck, how can you go wrong? Just make sure you have Flash installed to view the toons. Naked geeks! Inspired by a thesis project at MIT, www.geekporn.com is certainly a bizarre site. It's not bespectacled AD&D T&A, but there are nude nerds aplenty. From physics majors with their trousers down to an outstretched nude woman with Fermat's last theorem written out on her torso, this site lives up to its name. Whether or not that's a good thing is debatable. Michael Citrome |